Newswise — The phrase ‘you are what you eat’ was coined almost a century before Alois Alzheimer made his breakthrough in identifying brain disease, but the evidence is now clear that diet as well as age influences the brain. A growing body of research suggests a correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and an unhealthy gut, and Australian scientists are hoping to take this a step further by exploring how harmful gut bacteria accesses the brain and leads to dementia. University of South Australia nano bio-scientist Dr Ibrahim Javed says tiny metabolites released by bad bacteria in the gut can travel to the brain, causing inflammation and triggering Alzheimer’s disease, for which there is no cure.

In younger people this is less likely because the blood-brain barrier is much stronger, but this weakens as people age, allowing harmful substances to damage neurons. When the microbiome in the gut ages, it also loses the ability to fight disease. By identifying how metabolites released by bad bacteria damage neurons – and hopefully developing new drug therapies to block them – Dr Javed says it should be possible to slow down or halt the progression of Alzheimer’s.

A second aim of the three-year research project is to investigate how probiotics and nutritional supplements, both of which contain friendly bacteria, can stamp out bad bacteria and stop metabolites escaping from the gut. This follows on from several international clinical research studies that have demonstra.